despite its continuing sanctions against some Indian space facilities, the us wants India to carry two scientific instruments aboard Chandrayaan-1, the country's first lunar orbiter scheduled for an early-2008 launch.
An agreement to this effect was signed between the us National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) chief Michael Griffin and the Indian Space Research Organisation (isro) chairman G Madhavan Nair in Bangalore on May 9. Chadrayaan-1 will carry an American cargo of a specialist radar called mini-sar, which will look for ice deposits, and a moon mineralogy mapper (m 3) that will track mineral and chemical composition.